Abstract
In Housing the New Russia, Jane Zavisca analyzes the painful material and symbolic effects of housing market failure in post-Soviet Russia. Zavisca argues that “transplant failure”— transplanting and adapting the American model of housing markets into post-Soviet Russia— failed because of cultural resistance, economic illiquidity, and the uncertain context of “permanent crisis.” The new housing order did not provide affordable housing to its citizens, thus failing to meet the culturally-embedded expectation that every “normal” family has the right to attain a separate apartment. Zavisca’s research is methodologically rigorous, deftly combining insights from demography, political economy, sociology, and cultural studies, and drawing on a wide range of methods and data sources. Part I traces the cultural, political and economic development of a regime of “property without markets” from the Soviet to the post-Soviet era, drawing on archival research, secondary sources, film and literature, policy documents, and statistics. Part II analyses the effects of housing market failure on young adults, based on 130 in-depth qualitative interviews on family life with young adults in the Central Russian city of Kaluga, policy documents, and event analysis of housing, mobility and fertility statistics. The book is innovative in its focus on housing as a lens for understanding the cultural underpinnings of housing markets in different capitalist countries, with implications for America in particular. As Zavisca argues, “If the primary metaphor for a mortgage in Russia is ‘debt bondage,’ the equivalent metaphor in the United States is ‘homeownership.’ Whereas Russians are outraged by interest payments and uncertain ownership of a good they consider a basic right, Americans think paying interest on loans spanning decades is a normal condition of ownership” (p. 9).
Russian values and expectations about housing have roots in the 1950s, when the “Soviet promise” of a separate apartment for a nuclear family emerged as a right for citizens and as a reward for work. Set within this cultural context, Zavisca’s book shows in detail how the American model of housing markets based on mortgages and credit failed to “transplant” effectively into post-Soviet Russia. Russians continue to see housing as a right for citizens and workers, and mortgages are seen as risky, unjust and immoral “debt bondage.” Following “transplant failure,” housing markets were adapted in the post-Soviet context, with the grafting of demographic policy onto housing policy. In 2006, Putin introduced “maternity capital,” the biggest baby bonus in the world relative to income, a pro-natalist policy to encourage mothers to have second or third children. However, maternity capital could only be redeemed against housing mortgages, future education of children, or a pension. Despite the efforts of the state to use maternity capital to prop up a fledgling housing market, to increase the nation’s low birthrate, and to build confidence in the state, the policy has failed both as a housing policy and as a legitimation strategy. The effect of the transplant of American housing institutions has been a system of “property without markets,” where markets have failed to take hold, affordable housing is not accessible, and Soviet practices, inequalities, and values about housing persist. Zavisca’s in-depth qualitative research reveals that young families have “disappointed dreams” in relation to expectations about “living normally” in a separate apartment, and they rely on complex and ambivalent extended family networks to try to maximize their possibilities for inheriting housing. Very few people rent or take out mortgages, partly due to financial constraints and insecurity, and partly due to cultural meanings associated with debt, justice, and ownership. The research highlights inequalities in housing markets, but surprisingly, these do not correspond to the labor market position; rather, the most important factors for gaining property are birth order, family size, and property networks within extended families.
The idea of “normal” life as constituting the nuclear family, with at least one but preferably with two or more children, is at the heart of the book’s main argument about cultural values of housing and everyday life in post-Soviet Russia. Zavisca shows how this idea was culturally and historically constructed in relation to previous multigenerational housing norms, but does not problematize the idea of the nuclear family as a gendered concept, nor does she take into account alternative views on housing and family life within Russia. She argues that most people in Russia feel unjustly constrained in their reproductive options by the insecurity of housing policy, and that even adults without adult memories of Soviet times believe that Soviet housing conditions were better. The ideal aspiration to have a separate apartment for the nuclear family in order to “live normally” is presented as pervasive within Russia, related to continuities with the Soviet past. The qualitative data to support these claims draws on 130 accounts of young adults in the small city of Kaluga, recruited on the basis of a quota sample that varied by household tenure, education, and gender. Kaluga is described as “typical” because it does not stand out when compared to aggregate statistics for the Central Russian region, and because it sits on the boundary between core and periphery, both geographically and economically (p. 14).
However, as Zavisca acknowledges, “respondents knew that the study’s focus was on housing for young families, and this probably led them to focus their answers to general questions about reproductive decisions on the role of housing” (pp. 156–157). The qualitative research findings clearly identify a dominant discourse about housing values and expectations, but they are more limited in terms of making generalizations about the population as a whole. At least some young adults in Russia would have different ideals beyond the nuclear “heteronormative” family, but these alternative voices are overlooked. The elision between the separate apartment and the nuclear family—and the normative values underpinning this “ideal” combination—could have been interrogated further in relation to sociological debates on gender and the family.
Through the example of housing market failure in the uncertain context of “permanent crisis,” Housing the New Russia argues persuasively that many young adults in Russia are disappointed with the gap between aspirations and constraints in relation to housing and family life. Rich in empirical detail and analytical insights, this book is an important contribution to the study of housing, stratification, demand for mortgage credit, economic crisis, and market failure.